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H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Nov 23, 2016 09:04 AM UTC:

WinBoard is open source, and I am currently the most active developer. So, yes, I can and should change it. I had already started addressing the e.p. implementation in the latest release, to allow e.p. capturing on both skipped squares of a triple push (so that Omega Chess would work).

I uderstand that it would be very inconvenient to adapt the rules of your variant to work around problems of the interface.


"About pieces' images yes, I understand. But many other players do not know what is the elephant and why it is associated with a diagonal movement. And that's why I'm not sure which variant is better."

So one could argue it is high time for them to learn it. Originally Bishops were Elephants, moving two steps diagonally. In several languages they are still called such, and the slit in the head a modern Staunton Bishop is supposed to indicate their tusks. It never hurts to educate people.;-)

If I would use the 'featureless images' of Bishop and Rook (which were originally created for depicting pieces that move as normal Bishop and Rook, but promote differently, in Chu Shogi), I would be inclined to use them for Hunter / Pegasus, as the moves of these pieces are really very close to ordinary R and B.

"About the archbishop, if a piece has knightish moves but has not knightish image, it would deal "terrible damage", stunning any new players, because knightish moves are the most dangerous in the game and a player must be warned about this by the face of the horse :)"

Well, the Archbishop is a Bishop just as much as it is a Knight. It also seems confusing if too many pieces look like a Knight. Most players of variants in which the Archbishop participates do not seem to share your opinion. Seirawan Chess uses a Hawk for this piece, Gothic Chess uses the flattened Mitre I now used for Hunter. The popular SMIRF program for 10x8 Chess uses the crossed swords. I do have an image of a winged knight available, btw. People are likely to think it is a Pegasus, however. The names you assigned to the pieces does not fit their moves very well. In mythology Pegasus is a winged horse, and you use it on a piece that has no Knight moves. Similarly, a Centaur is both horse-like and human-like, and you made it fight for the Orcs without Knight moves. Perhaps you should consider renaming Phoenix to Pegasus, Pegasus to Eagle and Centaur to Troll (and Guard to Goblin, as Trolls and Goblins are known accomplishes of Orcs.)

"I had add the next rule about en passant capturing:

"For Elvish and Orcish Pawns en passant capturing has the first prioity, there is no possible to ignore en passant capturing with a simple moving to the square without capturing of this square​"

And how I see this is how the engine works now."

Indeed, this is how Fairy-Max works. But WinBoard is supposed to be a general interface, and it is conceivable that other variants would have other rules. If at all possible I would therefore prefer a solution that works for all cases. WinBoard already has a general mechanism for writing moves with unexpected side effects, by writing them as two separate moves separated by a comma. So in principle a non-standard e.p. capture asin yout example could be written d4f4,f4e3 . There is no notation mechanism, however, to suppress implied side effects. So if e.p. capture is assumed by default, variants where one could choose would be in trouble.

I guess a good first step would be to design a mechanism through which the engine could inform the GUI whether e.p. capture has priority over non-capture, or whether it should be aplayer choice. One way to do this would be to adopt the rule that only when non-capture and e.p. capture in the Betza notation are enabled on the same atom, it is a user choice (so that e.p. capture would need the double-move notation). The Elvish Pawn should then be defined as fmcFfeFifmnA , while in the case of user choice one would have written fmceFifmnA. In the latter case the GUI should highlight e3 in yellow when you grab d4, and f4 in cyan. When you then click e3 it would leave f4 on the board, when you click f4 it would highlight e3 so you can finish the e.p. capture.

 


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